Mark DeMoss

Fayetteville

He strolled into Fayetteville in the autumn, one of twenty-three passengers fresh off the 4:10 Greyhound. In those days it was possible to partake of public transportation with swagger. The bus wound the Ozark mountains up and down, swayed side to side. The rhythm fit his state of mind. The bus was not an airplane but it was shiny new. No tight skirt stew to light his cigarette, but he could lean back, stretch his legs and close his eyes feel almost sorry when it stopped.

The stroll was a thing he had to learn all on his own, growing up with only women. Women couldn't teach a man how to walk. The things he could learn from living with women felt like dying.

Fayetteville was just a place on the road, as far as his fare could take him. People there all scooting down the sidewalk like blind puppies on a leash, no idea who pulled the other end. He could stay and have the town, break all the men, own all the women.

Or he could take a car, get out before the rust of autumn consumed him from the inside, go somewhere real, like Los Angeles. Someplace where he wouldn't be in the shadow of anybody's mountain, no switchback curve to break the smooth steady speed of the car taking him wherever he wanted to be.

The ride would be more important than what was waiting for him. Something to break, something to own. Whatever he was riding to, he'd never find it in Fayetteville. He needed to get up some speed, and the curves he saw on every road would never let him go fast enough. The curves never took him anywhere.

next